Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Summer Job Survival Tactics

One more text-based post before picture posts resume! A girl's gotta upload the photos first!

The festival I worked at this summer has an unofficial policy: work hard, play hard. We DO work hard. We work long hours, some people work them outside in the amazing humidity of the state of Iowa, and others in the deep dark dungeon of our performing arts center. We're all overworked but the product we put out despite our exhaustion is good.

Here are some of the ways our particular department coped with the amazing schedule/hours:

* Magic 8 Ball. There was one mysteriously in with all of our supplies and we jokingly used it throughout the summer. More often than not, it was accurate. And when it didn't want to answer, it wouldn't.

* Wisdom from Dove Candies. I already did a post on it here, but we really did enjoy the bits of random wisdom found in the inside of the chocolates used as a survival tactic. A few more nuggets of wisdom include "Take the pleasure, skip the guilt" and "It is possible, believe it!". These wrappers decorated our office and our boss' desk.

* Diet Coke. Every stage manager needs caffeine and not all of us drink coffee. Diet Coke seemed to be the universal drink of choice, I have no idea how much diet coke we drank, but it was a lot. I drank more than I usually do on a job. And at least for me, it was losing its efficacy by the end of the season.

* The Zoo. Local bar who loves the tech crew, and the Festival as a whole. The bar is walkable from our housing, has darts (electronic) and two pool tables and a decent townie population. And pizzas. The bartenders were nice, knew us by name by the middle of the season and where everyone went to blow off steam. Definitely a saving grace.

* Fishbowl Margaritas. These margaritas were HUGE at a local Mexican restaurant. We couldn't believe the size of them. We had had a very very very long day and decided to reward ourselves on one of our first night's off from work. Yum.

* Hypnotiq/Citron Vodka/Cranberry Juice/Sierra Mist.Combine those together into a drink, and it was our drink of choice for awhile - one of the bartenders created it for us and we drank it throughout the summer. Bit of a change from gin and tonics, Cape Cod-ers and Tequila Sunrises, our other cocktails of choice.

* Crossan'whiches. JH and I used these as motivators for getting up for our twice-weekly production meeting at 8:30am. Worked quite well. Thank goodness for Burger King.

So Diet Coke, chocolate, fast food and alcohol - all the vices of a hard-working/over-worked stage manager. Or any theatrical technician. Or artist.